There Was A Hole Here
by Justin Valentine
Summary: One shot. My own sort of angsty outcome to the final battle of SH4. As comes with the territory, there be spoilers ahead.


Author Note: SH4 spoilers ahead in case you haven't noticed. Depicts the final boss fight of the game... except altered a tiny bit.

This is a one shot for Kinneas, who initially requested that I write this. It probably sucks as I wrote it up in a span of ninety minutes, but oh well.

All the characters belong to Konami, and all that stuff. You all should know that by now, though. wink

There Was A Hole Here

The whirling of metal churning water was prominent to Henry's ears, and it came from the bottom of that hole that was in front of him. He had been beyond questioning why all the holes were around at that point, and all he could wonder was what could be making such a noise at the bottom. It was way too dark to see much- he would have to jump down and find out for himself. It wasn't anything unusual now, with all the holes he had gone through before and everything, but still... still Henry could not shake away the feeling that something ultimately terrible was waiting for him.

But yet, it was either face whatever waited for him, or stay put inside that sickeningly red room. Neither choice sounded appealing, but jumping down the hole would have to do. He had to stop Walter.... he had to save Eileen.

The fall, like every other one he took through the other holes, didn't even hurt. It was almost as though he wasn't jumping down a hole at all- as if his mind only made it appear that way to him. It made him wonder about what Eileen told him at the hospital, about not seeing any holes, but the thought only went through his brain for a mere second. After that, he was solely concentrated on taking in what was surrounding him.

The room was large and circular, with eight monstrous blood stained pillars tracing the circle flawlessly. A spear stuck out from each of those pillars, but Henry was not about to mess with those just yet. A walkway separated the circle, with stairs at the end which led down into a murky pool of something red- something Henry knew all too well by then. It was the object inside the pool, however, that made him take a closer look.

The spheres moved fluently, as swift as the blood that half-covered it. It was entrancing... until he saw the spikes that outlined each of the spheres and decided to back off. This move caused him to back into something warm behind him. And that something howled to alert Henry of its presence.

When Henry looked at it, his eyes widened and blinked in a near state of indifference.

_'What... the hell... is _that

A large abomination- just like the other monsters he saw, it was too deformed to be human and too demonic to be animal. It was large and a pale lavender color. It's large hands and lack of a lower torso made it appear to be one of those two headed things he had been running into, except it didn't have two heads, and was much, _much _bigger. If it wasn't held back by the cords and pipes that restrained it, Henry was sure it would have killed him by then.

_'Maybe this is that thing I need to give that stinking umbilical cord to...'_

Seeing no other option, Henry took out the red box from his pocket and opened it. "Good God," he mumbled, as one hand covered his nose and the other grasped the cord wrapped in the bloodied white cloth. He inhaled deeply through his mouth, leaned back, and heaved the flesh up to the monster's open maw. And either it didn't like the smell either, or the cord really did have some kind of, almost magical effect on it, as it howled out in what appeared to be a great deal of pain.

Henry took a step back from it to make sure the monster didn't get further peeved and attempted to swipe at him with its arms.

_'What an ugly piece of...'_

Given the situation he was in, though, he still had trouble grasping the fact that all of these creatures were around.. that there were actual monsters that had been trying to kill him. In the end, however, no monster was worse than the one he faced when he turned back around.

And when he did turn around, he looked directly at the man he and Eileen were meant to stop. Walter... Walter Sullivan.

Droplets of blood trickled down the face of the man in the trench coat, but he smiled all the same. That impossibly human, unwavering smile. It made Henry furious to think that a man could smile after killing so many people, and the expression on his own face more than hinted at that. Henry shook his head and sneered, but then, there she was. It was Eileen... but only in body.

Something about her wasn't right, as she staggered forward on the walkway she stood upon. There was no other way to go for her, except down the small set of stairs, and into that churning pool of blood. And if she went any further, she would be minced to pieces by that gyroscope in the center. Henry looked to yell out to her, but he soon decided not to. There was nothing he could do to snap her out of it, not even a yell or shout- that was proven to him when Eileen's movements didn't falter to the sound of a child. The child she had wanted to help.

"Mom! Mom!" The sound of little Walter pounding on a set of doors was more than apparent to Henry, so much that Eileen and Walter _had _to have heard it. Neither of them, however, turned and actually acknowledged it.

"Let me in!" the pounding continued, the anguish in the child's voice making Henry shake his head once more. Walter must have noticed Henry's distress, as he then took the time to speak.

"Hey there, little Walter! Just a little longer now..." He looked up into the air, arms outstretched. The connotations Henry could make to Walter being a darker version of Jesus were surprisingly abundant, even more so than before. And then, he and the man in the coat locked eyes.

"Henry," Walter whispered, "you're it... the last of the Twentyone Sacraments." Henry didn't voice out a reply, seeing no need to. Everything would soon be settled, and no words Henry could say would epitomize what was soon going to take place. Walter, on the other hand, obviously didn't have those same thoughts.

"The Final Sign.... the Receiver of Wisdom..." Walter laughed, and raised his right hand. Clutched in it, a chainsaw.

Henry jumped back just as his enemy lunged forward, looking to gut him with a single thrust of the revved up weapon. Henry barely backed up enough to get out of its way, and Walter's momentum carried him into a stumble. Walter regained his composure in the same second, but it was all the time Henry needed to slam his steel pipe into Walter's hand. The chainsaw fell and skittered wildly along the floor, and almost as if it had a mind of its own, it maneuvered itself right towards Henry's feet.

Henry shuffled backwards and watched Walter walk right towards him. His left hand still held his six shooter, and his other one had just begun to reach back into his trench coat, sliding something up from the back of it. And there, he had revealed a steel pipe- one almost similar to Henry's. The discarded chainsaw turned itself away from the intended target and noisily fell into the crimson river in the center of the room, its dying sputters bubbling to the surface.. just as Eileen made her way down one of the steps in front of her.

Henry pulled out his revolver, and pointed it at Walter's head.

_'This doesn't get any easier..'_

He squeezed the trigger and the shot rang out, but the bullet hit nothing. Its target vanished into thin air-

-only to materialize right behind him.

"Hahahaha," was all Henry heard, before-

_WHACK!_

The pain that surged through Henry's skull was enough to force him to his knees. Another bashing from the steel pipe had him sprawled out on the concrete underneath him. A couple of coughs later, and Henry was spitting up blood.

Walter stood over what was to be his last victim, his own pistol aimed right at Henry. Henry, though, decided he should do a disappearing act of his own. He rolled to the right, and just missed the impact of Walter's bullet, which kicked up debris from the blast it made in the ground.

Henry immediately scampered to his feet and tried to aim his gun at Walter again. However, Walter was long gone from sight, teleporting behind Henry once more. Henry anticipated it this time, though, and simply ran forward to get out of the way of the pipe Walter swung.

_'I can't fight him this way..'_

That was when it hit him.

_'The spears.'_

Henry noted the writhing creature still bound in place, and the use of the spears was ominously clear. He ran to the closest one and yanked it from the material it was impaled into. He whirled around and ran for the mass at the peak of the circle, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Walter pointing his weapon... hearing that sinister laugh...

Henry growled as he leapt forward and plunged the spear into the creature's gigantic, heaving chest just before Walter could get off a shot. And as Henry lay on his stomach on the cold ground, he could see Walter hunched over, clutching his stomach.

And with that, Henry felt a new adrenaline rush to go off of as he bolted for the next spear that was close to him. He grabbed it, and repeated the same action he used with the first spear, and stuck the object into the monster's side before Walter could get to his feet.

_'If I can just keep this up...'_

He grabbed and used the third spear. The fourth. The fifth. Sixth.

Henry had amounted to a bit of trouble in pulling out the seventh spear from its resting place, and when he finally did, he dropped it.

"Eileen!"

He could hear her screams overpowered by the blood that took her under... and after that, a harsh grinding sound, and it was bitterly clear what was being ground up in that pool of blood.

"Eileen..." her name left Henry's mouth again, but still no one listened. So wrought with sadness and misery for letting such a fate befall his friend, he did not know of the man holding a gun to his back. Not until...

"Turn around, Henry."

A scowl formed on Henry's face, and then he did turn around. He spun, and pointed his six shooter back at Walter, and fired.

Walter fired back.

Both men emptied their guns into eachother, but only one man fell.

That man was Henry Townshend.

After the sixth shot pierced his chest, Henry's own gun clattered to the floor. Everything slowed down to a time-bending crawl as he fell to his knees, although he couldn't exactly feel it. Every muscle in his body was completely numb. His mind processing incoherent thoughts of his life, the five days before the hole appeared in his bathroom...

Henry managed to field enough state of mind to reach out with his arm, although to what he did not know. Perhaps he hoped someone would help him, but he knew that someone would never come. And that thought derived a guttural scream that varied across a number of emotions- sadness, anger, frustration, disbelief, fear... and then he fell face first in a bloody mess.

The last thing he saw, as things began to filter into grainy black and white and Walter's lips moved but didn't make a sound. It was almost as if some kind of old silent film, except Henry could tell what the killer was saying by simply reading his lips. "My will be done." Henry's eyelids closed right then and there, to never be opened again.


End file.
